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ORATION 



BY 



Hon. JOHN W. DANIEL 



ON THE 



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, ana unraer 



OF 



JEFFERSON DAVIS 



DELIVERED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE 



GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF VIRGINIA, 



MOZART ACADEMY OF MUSIC, JANUARY 25, 1890. 



RICHMOND: 

J. L. HILL PRINTING COMPANY. 
1890. 



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PRELIMINARY PROCEEDINGS 



ON THE PART OF THE 



General Assembly 



In the Senate of Virginia, December 7, 1889, Senator T. W. Har- 
rison, of Winchester, offered the following concurrent resolution : 

Resolved (the House of Delegates concurring), That the Hon. 
John W. Daniel be invited to deliver an address upon the life and 
character and services of the late Jefferson Davis, President of the 
Confederate States of America, in the hall of the House of Dele- 
gates, at such time during the present session of the Legislature as 
he may designate, and that a committee of two on the part of the 
Senate and three on the part of the House be appointed to wait upon 
the Hon. John W. Daniel and extend him this invitation and make 
all necessary arrangements. 

Agreed to by Senate December 7, 1889. 

J. D. PENDLETON", 

Clerk of Senate. 

Agreed to by House of Delegates December 7, 1889. 

J. BELL BIGGER, 

Clerk of House of Delegates. 

The following joint committee was appointed on the part of the 
Senate and House of Delegates, respectively : 

Committee on the part of the Senate : 

T. W. Harrison, of Winchester. 
Taylor Berry, of Amherst. 

Committee on the part of the House of Delegates : 
J. Owens Berry, of Fairfax. 
P. C. Cabell, of Amherst. 
James M. Stubbs, of Gloucester. 



In the House of Delegates December 12, 1889, the Hon. Walter 
T. Booth, of Richmond, offered the following concurrent resolution : 

Resolved (the Senate concurring), That the committee having in 
charge the arrangements for the delivery of the address of Hon. 
John W. Daniel on the character and life of Hon. Jefferson Davis 
be and is hereby authorized and instructed to select for the occasion 
some other and larger hall than that of the House of Delegates. 

Agreed to by the General Assembly of Virginia January 22, 1890. 

J. BELL BIGGER. 

Clerk House of Delegates and Keeper of Rolls of Virginia. 

The following extract is taken from the report of the special com- 
mittee made January 22, 1890 : 

" They have discharged the pleasant duty of tendering the said 
invitation, and are gratified to report that Hon. John W. Daniel 
has accepted the invitation, and has designated Saturday, January 
25, 1890, at 8 o'clock P. M., as the time for the delivery of the same 
at the Mozart Academy of Music." 

J. BELL BIGGER, 
Clerk House of Delegates and Keeper of Rolls of Virginia. 

At 8 P. M. on the 25th day of January, 1890, the Hon. R. H. 
Cardwell, Speaker of the House of Delegates, called the vast assem- 
blage to order, and delivered the following introductory address : 

Ladies and Gentlemen : 

It is the pleasing part of my duties to welcome you on this occa- 
sion — especially pleasing because the presence of this magnificent 
audience demonstrates that when the present General Assembly of 
Virginia invited one of her favorite sons and her most gifted orator 
to deliver in this, the capital city of the late Confederate States of 
America, an oration on the life and character of the lamented Jef- 
ferson Davis, they but voiced the wishes of the people whom they 
have the honor to represent. In 1865, nearing the close of the Con- 
federacy's short life, the General Assembly of Virginia addressed an 
open letter to President Davis, in which it declared " its desire in 
this critical period of affairs, by such suggestions as occur to them 
and by the dedication, if need be, of the entire resources of the 
Commonwealth to the common cause, to strengthen our hands, and 
to give success to our struggle for liberty and independence." 



In reply President Davis said: "Your assurance is to me a source 
of the highest gratification; and while conveying to you my thanks 
for the expression of confidence of the General Assembly in my sin- 
cere devotion to my country and its sacred cause, I must beg per- 
mission in return to bear witness to the uncalculating, unhesitating 
spirit with which Virginia has, from the moment when she first 
drew the sword, consecrated the blood of her children and all her 
material resources to the achievement of the object of our struggle." 
[Applause.] 

Our " sacred cause " was lost, and after long years of vicarious 
suffering, through all of which he was true to us and to our dead, 
our chieftain has passed away, but the love for the principles for 
which we contended, and the memory of him who contributed so 
much to make our record in that struggle glorious, will live forever 
in the hearts of all true men and women throughout our Southland. 
It is our purpose on this occasion to review the brilliant life and 
spotless character of Mr. Davis, and in selecting as the orator that 
fearless son of Virginia whose eloquent words, as enduring as mar- 
ble, have held up for review by coming generations the life and 
character of other of our great leaders who have " crossed over the 
river," we again have your approval, and his name is so indelibly 
written in our affections that your reception of him here to-night 
will further demonstrate that it is a needless task for me to more 
formally introduce to a Virginia audience John W. Daniel. 



The Oration. 



Mr. Speaker, Gentlemen of the General Assembly of Virginia, Ladies 
and Gentlemen: 

Noble are the words of Cicero when he tells us that "it 
is the first and fundamental law of history that it should neither 
dare to say anything that is false or fear to say anything that is true, 
nor give any just suspicion of favor or disaffection." 

No less high a standard must be invoked in considering the life, 
character, and services of Jefferson Davis — a great man of a great 
epoch, whose name is blended with the renown of American arms 
and with the civic glories of the cabinet and the congress hall — a 
son of the South who became the head of a confederacy more pop- 
ulous and extensive than that for which Jefferson wrote the Declara- 
tion of Independence, and the commander-in-chief of armies many 
times greater than those of which Washington was the general. 

He swayed senates and led the soldiers of the Union — and he 
stood accused of treason in a court of justice. 

He saw victory sweep illustrious battle-fields — and he became a 
captive. 

He ruled millions — and he was put in chains. 

He created a nation; he followed its bier; he wrote its epitaph — 
and he died a disfranchised citizen. 

But though great in all vicissitudes and trials, he was greatest in 
,that fortune which, lifting him first to the loftiest heights and cast- 
ing him thence into the depths of disappointment, found him every- 
where the erect and constant friend of truth. He conquered him- 
self and forgave his enemies, but bent to none but God. 

Severe Scrutiny of his Life and Character. 

No public man was ever subjected to sterner ordeals of character 
or cloaer scrutiny of conduct. He was in the public gaze for nearly 



half a century; and in the fate which at last overwhelmed the 
Southern Confederacy and its President, its official records and 
private papers fell into the hands of his enemies. 

"Wary eyes now searched to see if he had overstepped the bounds 
which the laws of war have set to action, and could such evidence 
be found wrathful hearts would have cried for vengeance. But 
though every hiding-place was opened, and reward was ready for 
any who would betray the secrets of the captive chief, whose armies 
were scattered and whose hands were chained — though the sea gave 
up its dead in the convulsion of his country — there could be found 
no guilty fact, and accusing tongues were silenced. 

" Whatever record leaped to light, 
His name could not be shamed." 

I could not, indeed, nor would I, divest myself of those identities 
and partialities which make me one with the people of whom he 
was the chief in their supreme conflict. But surely if records were 
stainless and enemies were dumb, and if the principals now pro- 
nounce favorable judgment upon the agent, notwithstanding that 
he failed to conduct their affairs to a successful issue, there can be 
no suspicion of undue favor on the part of those who do him honor ; 
and the contrary inclination could only spring from disaffection. 

The South Knew Him and Therefore Honors Him. 

The people of the South knew Jefferson Davis. He mingled his 
daily life with theirs under the eager ken of those who had bound 
up with him all that life can cherish. 

To his hands they consigned their destinies, and under his guidance 
they committed the land they loved, with husbands, fathers, sons, and 
brothers, to the God of Battles. 

Ruin, wounds, and death became their portion. And yet this 
people do declare that Jefferson Davis was an unselfish patriot and 
a noble gentleman ; that as the trustee of the highest trusts that 
man can place in man he was clear and faithful ; and that in his 
high office he exhibited those grand heroic attributes which were 
worthy of its dignity and of their struggle for independence. 

Thus it was that when the news came that he was no more there 
was no Southern home that did not pass under the shadow of afflic- . 
tion. Thus it was that the governors of commonwealths bore his 
body to the tomb and that multitudes gathered from afar to bow' in 
reverence. Thus it was that throughout the South the scared sol- 



diers, the widowed wives, the kindred of those who had died in the 
battle which he delivered met to give utterance to their respect and 
sorrow. Thus it is that the General Assembly of Virginia is now 
convened to pay their tribute. Completer testimony to human worth 
was never given, and thus it will be that the South will build a monu- 
ment to record their verdict that he was true to his people, his con- 
science, and his God ; and no stone that covers the dead will be 
worthier of the Roman legend : 
"Clarus et vir fortissimus." 

Some Personal Traits of Character. 

The life now closed was one of conflict from youth to manhood, 
and from manhood to the grave. Before he was a man in years he 
was an officer in the army of his country, and intermissions of mili- 
tary and civil services were but spent in burnishing the weapons 
which were to shine in the clash of opposing interests. 

The scenes of the hearthstone and of the cloisters of friendship 
and religion have no place on that large canvas which portrays the 
great events of national existence; and those who come forth from 
them equipped and strong to wrestle and contend leave often behind 
them the portions of their life work which, could others know 
them, would reverse all conceptions of character and turn aversion 
to affection. 

Those who knew Jefferson Davis in intimate relations honored 
him most and loved him. Genial and gentle, approachable to all, 
especially regardful of the humble and the lowly, affable in conver- 
sation, and enriching it from the amplest stores of a refined and cul- 
tured mind, he fascinated those who came within the circle of his 
society and endeared them to him. Reserved as to himself, he bore 
the afflictions of a diseased body with scant allusion even when it 
became needful to plead them in self-defense. With bandaged eyes 
and weak from suffering he would come from a couch of pain to 
vote on public issues, and for over twenty years, with the sight of 
one eye gone, he dedicated his labors to the vindication of the South 
from the aspersions which misconceptions and passions had engen- 
dered. 

At over four-score years he died, with his harness on, his pen yet 
bright and trenchant, his mental eye undimmed, his soul athirst for 
peace, truth, justice, and fraternity, breathing his last breath in 
(clearing the memories of the Lost Confederacv. 



10 

Clear and strong in intellect; proud, high-minded, sensitive; self- 
willed, but not self-centred ; self-assertive for his cause, but never for 
his own advancement ; aggressive and imperious, as are nearly all 
men fit for leadership; with the sturdy virtues that command respect, 
but without the small diplomacies that conciliate hostility, he was one 
of those characters that naturally make warm friends and bitter ene- 
mies ; a veritable man, " terribly in earnest," such as Carlyle loved 
to count among the heroes. 

Neither Selfish, Coldless, nor Cruel. 

Such a man can never be understood while strife lasts ; and little 
did they understand him who thought him selfish, cold, or cruel. 
When he came to Richmond as your President your generous peo- 
ple gave him a home, and he declined it. After the war, when 
dependent on his labor for the bread of his family, kind friends ten- 
dered him a purse. Gracefully refusing, " Send it," he said, " to 
the poor and suffering soldiers and their families." His heart was 
fall of melting charity, and in the Confederate days the complaint 
was that his many pardons relaxed discipline, and that he would not 
let the sentences of military courts be executed. - Not a human being 
ever believed for an instant the base imputation that he appropriated 
Confederate gold. He distributed the last to the soldiers, and " the 
fact is," he wrote to a friend, " that I staked all my property and 
reputation on the defense of States' rights and constitutional liberty 
as I understand them. The first I spent in the cause, except what 
was saved and appropriated or destroyed by the enemy ; the last has 
been persistently assailed by all which falsehood could invent and 
malignity employ." 

Humanity to Prisoners of "War. t 

He would have turned with loathing from misuse of a prisoner, 
for there was no characteristic of Jefferson Davis more marked than 
his regard for the weak, the helpless, and the captive. By act of 
the Confederate Congress and' by general orders the same rations 
served to the Confederates were issued to the prisoners, though 
taken from a starving army and people. 

Brutal and base was the effort to stigmatize himjas a conspirator 
to maltreat prisoners, but better for him that it was made, for while 
he was himself yet in prison the evidences of his humanity were so 
overwhelming that finally slander stood abashed and malignity re- 
coiled. 



I n 

i Even at Andersonville, where the hot summer sun was, of course, 
^disastrous to men of the Northern clime, well-nigh as many of their 
jguard died as of them. 

With sixty thousand more Federal prisoners in the South than 
there were Confederate prisoners in the North, four thousand more 
Confederates than Federals died in prison. A cyclone of rhetoric 
cannot shake this mountain of fact, and these facts are alike im- 
movable : 

1. He tried to get the prisoners exchanged by the cartel agreed 
on, but as soon as an excess of prisoners was in Federal hands this 
was refused. 

2. A delegation of the prisoners themselves was sent to Washing- 
ton to represent the situation and the plea of humanity for exchange. 

3. Vice-President Stephens was sent to see President Lincoln by 
President Davis, and urge exchange, in order "to restrict the ca- 
lamities of war," but he was denied audience. 

4. Twice — in January, 1864, and in January, 1865 — President 
Davis proposed through Commissioner Ould that each side should 
send surgeons and allow money, food, clothing, and medicines to be 
sent to prisoners, but no answer came. 

5. -Unable to get medicines in the Confederacy, offer was made to 
buy them from the United States for the sole use of Federal pris- 
oners. No answer was made. 

6. Then offer was made to deliver the sick and wounded without 
any equivalent in exchange. There was no reply for months. 

7. Finally, and as soon as the United States would receive them, 
thousands of both sick and well were delivered without exchange. 

The record leaves no doubt as to the responsibility for refusal to 
exchange. General Grant assumed it, saying in his letter of August 
18, 1864 : " It is hard on our men in Southern prisons not to ex- 
change them, but it is humanity to those left in the ranks to fight 
our battles. If we commence a system of exchanges which liber- 
ates all prisoners taken, we will have to fight on until the whole 
South is exterminated. If we hold those caught they amount to no 
more than dead men. At this particular time, to release all rebel 
prisoners North would insure Sherman's defeat and would com- 
promise our own safety here." 

Alexander H. Stephens declared that the effort to fix odium on 
President Davis constituted " one of the boldest and baldest at- 
tempted outrages upon the truth of history which has ever been 
essayed." 



" 12 

Charles A. Dana, of the New York Sun, formerly Assistant Sec- 
retary of War, nobly vindicated President Davis while he lived, de- 
clared him "altogether acquitted" of the charge, and said of him 
dead, "A majestic soul has passed." 

When General Lee congratulated his army on the victories of 
Richmond, he said to them : " Your humanity to the wounded and 
the prisoners was the fit and crowning glory of your valor." And 
could that army now march by, they would lift those laurels from 
their bayonets and throw them upon the grave of the Confederate \ 
President. 

He Resented Wrong, but Bore Neither Hatred nor Malice. 

Resentment wreaked itself upon him ere these truths were fully 
known, and while, indeed, passion turned a deaf ear to them. And 
if he struck back, what just man can blame him ? With a reward 
of $100,000 offered for him as an assassin ; charged with maltreat- 
ing prisoners; indicted for treason and imprisoned for two years 
and denied a trial; handcuffed like a common ruffian; put in soli- 
tary confinement; a silent sentinel and a blazing light at watch on 
his every motion — where is there a creature w-ho can call himself a 
man who could condemn — aye, who does not sympathize with the 
goaded innocence and the righteous indignation with which he 
spurned the accusations and denounced the accusers? 

But whatever he suffered, the grandeur of his soul lifted him 
above the feelings of hatred and malice. 

When Grant lay stricken at Mt. McGregor he was requested to 
write a criticism of his military career. He declined for two reasons : 
" First, General Grant is dying. Second, though he invaded our. 
country with a ruthless, it was with an open hand, and, as far as I 
know, he abetted neither arson nor pillage, and has since the war, I 
believe, shown no malignity to the Confederates either of the mili- 
tary or civil service; therefore, instead of seeking to disturb the 
quiet of his closing hours, I would, if it were in my power, con- 
tribute to the peace of his mind and the comfort of his body." 
This was no new-born feeling. At Fortress Monroe, when suffer- 
ing the tortures of bodily pain in an unwholesome prison, and the 
worse tortures of a humiliating and cruel confinement which make 
man blush for his kind to recall them, he yet, in the solitude of his 
cell, shared only by his faithful pastor, took the Holy Communion 
which commemorates the blood and the broken body of Jesus Christ, 
and, bowing to God, declared his heart at peace with Him and man. 



13 

As free from envy as he was from malice, he was foremost in re- 
cognizing, applauding, and eulogizing the great character and 
achievements of General R. E. Lee, and with his almost dying hand 
he wove a chaplet of evergreen beauty to lay upon his honored 
brow. 

Rigid Adherence to Principle. 

Sternly did he stand for principle. He was no courtier, no flat- 
terer, no word magician, no time-server, no demagogue, unless that 
word shake from it the contaminations of its abuse and return to its 
pristine meaning — a leader of the people. Like King David's was 
his command, "There shall no deceitful man dwell in my house." 
A pure and lofty spirit breathed through his every utterance, which, 
like the Parian stone, revealed in its polish the fineness of the grain. 
I can recall no public man who in the midst of such shifting and 
perplexing scenes of strife maintained so firmly the consistency of 
his principles, and who, despite the shower of darts that hurtled 
around his head, triumphed so completely over every dishonoring 
imputation. It was because those who" knew his faith knew always 
where to find him, and wherever found he proclaimed that faith as 
the standard-bearer unfurls his colors. 

He was always ready to follow his principles to their logical con- 
clusion; to become at any sacrifice their champion; to face defeat in 
their defense, and to die, if need be, rather than disguise or recant 
them. 

Advocating the Mexican war while a member of the House of 
Representatives from Mississippi, he resigned his seat there to take 
command of a Mississippi regiment and share the hardships and 
dangers of the field. 

When later his party in Mississippi seemed to be losing ground, 
and General Quitman, its candidate for governor, retired, a popular 
election giving forecast of 7,500 majority against him, Jefferson 
Davis resigned his seat in the United States Senate to accept its 
leadership and become its nominee, and with such effect did he rally 
its ranks that he came within 1,000 votes of election. 

When he turned homeward from Mexico the laurelled hero of 
Buena Vista, he was everywhere hailed with acclamation, and a 
commission as brigadier-general of volunteers in the United States 
army was tendered him by President Polk. We may well conceive 
with what pride the young soldier, not yet forty years of age, would 
welcome so rare an honor in the cherished profession which had 



3ljp( 



14 

kindled his youthful ardor, and in which he had become now so> 
signally distinguished. 

But he had taught the doctrine that the State and not the Federal 
Government was the true constitutional fountain of such an honor, 
and from another hand he would not bend his knightly brow to 
receive it. And yet later on, when summoned from the privacy of 
home to a place in the Cabinet of President Pierce, he declined 
because he believed it to be his duty to remain in Mississippi and 
wrestle for the cause with which he was identified. Thus did he 
abandon or decline the highest dignities of civil and military life, 
always putting principle in the lead, and himself anywhere that 
would best support it. 

Representative Men Interpret the Genius op Peoples. 

Personal virtues and public services are so different in essence 
and effect that nations often glorify those whose private characters 
are detestable, and condemn others who possess the most admirable 
traits. The notorious vices of Marlborough stood not in the way of 
the titles, honors, and estates which England heaped on the hero of 
Blenheim, and the nobleness of Robert Emmet did. not shield the 
champion of Irish independence from the scaffold. 

But the men of history cannot be thus dismissed from the bar of 
public judgment with verdicts wrung from the passion of an hour. 
There is a court of appeals in the calmer life and clearer intelli- 
gence of nations, and whenever the inherent rights or the moral 
ideas underlying the movements of society are brought in question, 
the personal qualities, the honor, the comprehension, the constancy 
of its leading spirits must contribute largely to the final judgment. 
In this forum personal and public character are blended, for in great 
conjunctures it is largely through their representative men that we 
must interpret the genius of peoples. 

A True Representative Man of the South. 

It was fortunate for the South, for America, and for humauity that 
at the head of the South in war was a true type of its honor, char- 
acter, and history — a man whose clear rectitude preserved every 
complication from impeachment of bad faith ; a patriot whose love 
of law and liberty were paramount to all expediencies; a commander 
whose moderation and firmness could restrain, and whose lofty pas- 
sion and courage could inspire; a publicist whose intellectual po\ Hl ra 



15 

and attainments made him the peer of any statesman who has 
championed the rights of commonwealths in debate, or stood at the 
helm when the ship of state encountered the tempest of civil com- 
motion. 

He Truly Represented the South as a Constitutional 

President. 

In the tremendous storm which has scarce yet subsided Jefferson 
Davis never once forgot that he was a constitutional President 
under the limits of the fundamental law of the Confederate republic. 
Some thought that he might have imparted a fiercer energy to his 
sore-pressed battalions had he grasped the purse and the sword, 
seized the reins of a dictator, and pushed the enterprise of war to 
its most exigent endeavor. But never once did ambition tempt or 
stress of circumstances drive him to admit the thought, at war as it 
was with the principles of the revolution which he led and with the 
genius of the southern people. He stood for constitutional right. 
To him it was the Rock of Ages. Who does not now rejoice that 
he was inflexible? 

He Truly Represented the South in not Negotiating for Peace 
on Other Terms than Independence. 

Had a man less sober-minded and less strong than he been in his 
place the Confederacy would not only have gone down in material 
ruin — it would have been buried in disgrace. Excesses, sure to 
bring retribution in the end, would have blotted its career, and 
weakness would have stripped its fate of dignity. I dismiss, there- 
fore, the unworthy criticism that he should have negotiated peace 
in February, 1865, when Hon. Francis Blair came informally to 
Richmond, and when, as the result of his mission, Messrs. Stephens, 
Hunter, and Campbell met President Lincoln and Secretary Seward 
in conference at Hampton Roads. Reports have been circulated that 
at that time peace could have been secured upon a basis of a return 
to the Union, with payment of some sort to southern owners for 
their emancipated slaves. There is no foundation for such belief. 
The idea which led to the conference was that of Mr. Blair — that 
the Confederate cause being hopeless, the Confederate leaders could 
be induced to wheel their columns into line with those of the Union 
army now thundering at their gates, and then march off" to Mexico 
to assert the Monroe doctrine and expel Maximilian, the usurping 



16 

emperor, from his throne. But when President Lincoln and Secre- 
tary Seward appeared no proposal of any kind was made but un- 
conditional surrender. This'was reported, and of course declined. 
Even had compensation for slaves been proposed the Confederate 
soldiers would have repudiated such terms as conditions of sur- 
render. True, they were in dire distress. "With scarce a handful, 
Johnston could only harass Sherman in the South, and the men of 
Lee could see from their trenches the mighty swarms marshalling 
in their front. The starvation that clutched at their throats plunged 
its dagger to their hearts as they thought of loved ones famishing at 
home. But the brave men who still clung to their tattered stand- 
ards knew naught of the art or practice of surrender. They thought 
of Valley Forge and saw beyond it Yorktown. Had not Washing- 
ton thought of the mountains of West Augusta when driven from 
his strongholds? Why not they? Had not Jackson left the legacy, 
"What is life without honor? Dishonor is worse than death." 
They could not comprehend the idea of surrender, for were they 
not their fathers' sons? 

Revolutions Can Only Die in the Last Ditch. 

They would rather have died than surrender then, and they were 
right. Revolutions imply the impossibility of compromise. They 
never begin until overtures are ended. Once begun, there is no 
half-way house between victory and death, and they can only die 
with honor in the last ditch. 

Had surrender come before its necessity was manifest to all man- 
kind, reproach, derision, and contempt, feud, faction, and recrimi- 
nation would have brought an aftermath of disorder and terror ; 
and had it been based on such terms as those which critics have 
suggested a glorious revolution would have been snuffed out like a 
farthing caudle in a miserable barter about the ransom of slaves. 

It was well for all that it was fought to the finish without compro- 
mise either tendered or entertained. The fact that it was so fought 
out gave finality to its result and well-nigh extinguished its embers 
with its flames. No drop of blood between Petersburg and Appo- 
mattox — not one in the last charge — was shed in vain. Peace with 
honor must pay its price, even if that price be life itself, and it is 
because the South paid that price with no miser's hand that her sur- 
viving soldiers carried home with them the "consciousness of duty 
faithfully performed." We should rejoice that if weak men wavered 
before the end, neither Jefferson Davis, nor Robert Lee, nor Joseph 



17 

Johnston wavered. Though they and their compeers could not 
achieve the independence of the Confederacy, they did preserve the 
independent and unshamed spirit of their people. And it is in that 
spirit now that men of the South find their shield against calumny, 
their title to respect, their welcome to the brotherhood of noble men, 
and their incentive to noble and unselfish deeds. 

"If you would know why Rome was great," says a student of her 
history, "consider that Roman soldier whose armed skeleton was 
found in a recess near the gate of Pompeii. When burst the sul- 
phurous storm the undaunted hero dropped the visor of his helmet 
and stood there to die." 

Would you know why the South is great? Look on the new-made 
grave in Louisiana, and consider the ragged soldier of Bentonville 
.and Appomattox. 

Early Days — Davis and Lincoln. 

After the Revolutionary war Samuel Davis, who had served in it 
as one of the mounted men of Georgia, settled in Kentucky. Pend- 
ing the war, in 1782 (the very year that George Rogers Clarke cap- 
tured Kaskaskia), Thomas Lincoln, of Rockingham county, Virginia, 
removed to the same State. Jefferson Davis, the son of the first- 
named settler, was born on June 8, 1808, and on February 12, 1809, 
was born the son of the other — Abraham Lincoln. Samuel Davis 
moved to Mississippi. His son became a cadet at West Point under 
appointment from President Monroe, and soon commissioned as a 
lieutenant in the United States army, appeared in the service fighting 
the Indians on the frontier in the Black Hawk war. In early man- 
hood Abraham Lincoln removed to Illinois, and now becoming a 
captain of volunteers, he and Jefferson Davis were under the same 
flag engaged in the same warfare. 

John Hampden and Oliver Cromwell had once engaged passage 
for America, and George Washington was about to become a mid- 
shipman in the British navy. Had not circumstances changed these 
plans Hampden and Cromwell might have become great names in 
American history. And suppose Admiral George Washington, 
under the colors of King George HI., had been pursuing the Count 
D'Estaing, whose French fleet hemmed Cornwallis in at Yorktown — 
who knows how the story of the great Revolution might have been 
written? Had Jefferson Davis gone to Illinois and Lincoln to Mis- 
sissippi, what different histories would be around those names ; and 
yet I fancy that the great struggle with which they were identified 
2 



18 

would have been changed only in incidents and not in its great cur 
rents. 

A Planter's Life— 1835 to 1843. 

In 1835 Lieutenant Davis resigned his commission in the army, 
intermarried Miss Taylor, a daughter of Zachary Taylor, and re 
tired to his Mississippi estate, where for eight years he spent his 
time in literary studies and agricultural pursuits — a country gentle- 
man with a full library and broad acres. 

Such life as his was that of John Hampden before the country 
squire suddenly emerged from obscurity as a debater, a leader of 
Parliament, and a soldier, to plead and fight and die in the people's 
cause against a tyrant's and a tax-gatherer's exactions. Such life as 
his was that of many of the fathers of this republic; and when 
Jefferson Davis entered public life, in 1843, he came — as Washing- 
ton, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Henry, Mason, Clay, Calhoun, and 
Andrew Jackson had come before him — from a southern plantation, 
where he had been the head of a family and the master of slaves. 

His Various Employments from 1843 to 1861. 

From 1843 to 1861 the life of Jefferson Davis was spent for the 
most part in public services, and they were as distinguished as the 
occasions which called them into requisition were numerous and 
important. A presidential elector, a member of the House of Repre- 
sentatives, a United States senator (once by appointment and twice 
by election), a colonel of the Mississippi volunteers in Mexico, twice 
a candidate for governor of his State before the people— these desig- 
nations give suggestion of the number and dignity of his employ- 
ments. 

Military Services in Mexico. 

How he led the Mississippi riflemen in storming Monterey with- 
out bayonets; how he threw them into the famous "V" to receive 
and repulse the Mexican lancers at the crisis of the battle, of Buena 
Vista; how, though wounded and bleeding from a musket-shot, he 
sat his horse, and would not quit the field till victory had crowned 
it, is a picture that hangs conspicuously in the galleries of our his- 
tory. The movement — prompt, original, and decisive — disclosed 
the general of rare ability ; the personal conduct avouched the hero. 

"Colonel Davis," said General Taylor in his report, "though 
severely wounded, remained in the saddle until the close of the 



19 

|ction. His distinguished coolness and gallantry at the head of his 
regiment on this day entitled him to the particular notice of the 
government." 

Colonel Davis won the battle of Buena Vista, and Buena Yista 
made General Taylor President. 

In the Cabinet oe President Pierce. 

As Secretary of War in the Cabinet of President Pierce, a position 
which he only accepted after repeated solicitation, he was an officer 
second to none who has ever administered that department in execu- 
tive faculty and in benefits bestowed on the military service. 

It was under his direction that George B. McClellan (then a cap- 
tain, afterwards general-in-chief and commander of the Army of the 
Potomac) was sent with a commission to the Crimea to observe 
military operations and to study the tactics and conditions of the 
European armies there engaged, the result of which introduced 
many improvements. 

There was nothing that came within his jurisdiction that he did 
not methodize "and seek to extend to the widest range of utility. 
Material changes were made in the model of arms. Iron gun-car- 
riages were introduced and experiments made which led to the cast- 
ing of heavy guns hollow, instead of boring them after the casting. 
The army was increased by two regiments of cavalry and two of 
infantry. Amongst his earnest recommendations were the revision 
of army regulations ; the increase of the medical corps ; the intro- 
duction of light-infantry tactics ; rifled muskets and balls ; the 
exploration of the western frontiers, and the maintenance of large 
garrisons for the defense of settlers against the Indians. And there 
was no direction in which was not felt his comprehensive under- 
standing and his diligent hand. 

His efforts to obtain increased pay for officers and men and pen- 
sions to their widows betokened those liberal sentiments to the 
defenders of their country which he never lost opportunity to evince 
or express. 

He refused to carry politics into the matter of clerical appoint- 
ments, and in selecting a clerk was indifferent whether he was a 
Democrat or a Whig. To get the best clerk was his sole thought, 
and while I am not prepared to condemn as spoilsmen those who 
seek agents in unison with their principles, I can readily recognize 
the simplicity and loftiness of a nature which pays no heed to con- 
siderations of partisan advantage. 



20 

The confidence which he inspired was indicated by the trust 
reposed in him by Congress to take charge of the appropriations 
made for the construction of the new Senate chamber and hall of 
Representatives, and of those also to locate the most eligible route 
for the railway to connect the Mississippi Valley with the Pacific 
coast. 

The administration of Franklin Pierce closed in 1857, and it had 
presented the only instance in our history of a cabinet unchanged 
for four years in the individuals which composed it. None have 
filled the executive chair with more fidelity to public interests than 
Franklin Pierce, and words with which his Secretay of War eulo- 
gized him were worthily spoken by one to whom they were equally 
applicable : " Chivalrous, generous, amiable, true to his friends and 
his faith, frank and bold in his opinions, he never deceived any one. 
And if treachery had ever come near him it would have stood 
abashed in the presence of his truth, his manliness, and his confiding 
simplicity." 

First Public Appearance in Politics — In the House of Repre- 

sentatives in 1845. 

In his first public appearance, in 1843, Mr. Davis had uttered the 
key-note of his political faith by moving to instruct the delegates 
from Mississippi to vote for John C. Calhoun as a presidential 
nominee in a national democratic convention. 

Calhoun was, as he regarded, "the most trusted leader of the 
South and the greatest and purest statesman of the Senate," and 
while he did not concur. in his doctrines of nullification, he adopted 
otherwise his constitutional views, and in the most part the politics 
which he advocated. Taking his seat in the House of Representa- 
tives in December, 1845, he at once launched into the work and 
debates of that body, and with his first address made that impres- 
sion of eloquence and power which he maintained throughout his 
parliamentary career. John Quincy Adams is said to have pre- 
. dieted on hearing it that he would make his mark, and his pro- 
phecy was very soon fulfilled. He advocated, in a resolution offered 
by himself the very first month of his service, the conversion of 
some of the military posts into schools of instruction, and the sub- 
stitution of detachments furnished proportionately by the States for 
the garrisons of enlisted men; and on the 29th of the same month 
made a forcible speech against Know-Nothingism, which was then 



21 

becoming popular. He had barely risen into distinguished views 
by his positions and speeches on these and other subjects, such as 
the Mexican war and the Oregon question, ere he resigned to take 
the field in Mexico, and when he returned to public life after the 
Mexican war it was as a member of the United States Senate. 

In the Senate. 

It was in that body that his rich learning, his ready information 
on current topics, and his shining abilities as an orator and debater 
were displayed to most striking advantage. The great triumvirate, 
Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, were in the' Senate then, as were also 
Cass, Douglass, Bright, Dickinson, King, and others of renown, 
and when Calhoun ere long departed this life the leadership of the 
States'-Eights party fell upon Jefferson Davis. 

The compromise measures of Mr. Clay of 1850 he opposed, and 
insisted on adhering to the line of the Missouri compromise of 1820, 
on the ground that " pacification had been the fruit borne by that 
tree, and it should not have been ruthlessly hewn down and cast 
into the fire." Meeting Mr. Clay and Mr. Berrien, of Georgia, 
together in the Capitol grounds one day, Mr. Clay urged him in a 
friendly way to support his bill, saying he thought it would give 
peace to the country for thirty years, and then he added to Mr. 
Berrien, "You and I will be under ground before that time, but our 
young friend here may have trouble to meet." 

Mr. Davis replied : I cannot consent to transfer to posterity an 
issue that is as much ours as theirs, when it is evident that the sec- 
tional inequality will be greater than now, and render hopeless the 
attainment of justice." 

This was his disposition — never to evade or shift responsibility; 
and that he did meet it is the reason why the issue is now settled, 
and that ourselves, not our children, were involved in civil war. 

"When Clay on one occasion bantered him to future discussion, 
"Now is the moment," was his prompt rejoinder. But these colli- 
sions of debate did not chill the personal relations of these two 
great leaders. Henry Clay was full of that generosity which recog- 
nized the foeman worthy of his steel, and frequently evinced his 
admiration and friendship for Jefferson Davis. Besides, there was 
a tie between them that breathed peace over all political antagonism. 
Lieutenant-Colonel Clay, the son of the Whig leader, had been slain 
in the battle of Buena Vista. "My poor boy," said he to Senator 
Davis, " usually occupied about one-half of his letters home in 



22 

praising you," and his eyes filled with tears. When turning to him 
once in debate, he said : " My friend from Mississippi — and I trust 
that he will permit me to call him my friend, for between us there 
is a tie the nature of which we both understand." 

Without following, as indeed I could not in this brief hour, the 
bearings of questions that came before the Senate during his service, 
or portraying the scenes of digladiation in which they were dealt 
with, I but pronounce the general verdict when I say that his great 
parliamentary gifts ranked him easily with the foremost men of that 
body. He was measured by the side of the giants of his time, and 
in nothing found unequal. 

Two Speeches in Congress About the Mexican War — Davis 
and Lincoln, Again. 

In connection with the Mexican war two speeches were made in 
the House of Representatives which were filled with the doctrines 
which all Americans have inherited from the fathers of the republic. 

The one of them was made by a man who, with a mind as broad 
as the continent, advocated the railroad to connect the Mississippi 
Valley with the West, and who poured out from a heart thrilling 
with the great tradition of his country inspiring appeals for frater- 
nity and union. 

"We turn," said he, "from present hostility to former friendship, 
from recent defection to the time when Massachusetts and Virginia, 
the stronger brothers of our family, stood foremost and united to 
defend our common rights. From sire to son has descended the 
love of our Union in our hearts, as in our history are mingled the 
names of Concord and Camden, of Yorktown and Saratoga, of 
Monetrio and Plattsburgh, of Chippewa and Erie, of Bowyer and 
Guilford, and New Orleans and Bunker Hill. Grouped together 
they form a monument to the common glory of our common 
country ; and where is the southern man who would wish that mon- 
ument even less by one of the northern names that constitute the 
mass? Who, standing on the ground made sacred by the blood of 
Warren, could allow sectional feeling to curb his enthusiasm as he 
looked upon that obelisk which rises a monument to freedom's and 
his country's triumph, and stands a type of the time, the men, and 
event it commemorates ; built of material that mocks the waves of 
time, without niche or moulding for parasite or creeping thing to 
rest on, and pointing like a finger to the sky, to raise man's thoughts 
to philanthropic and noble deeds ? " 



23 

Scarce had these words died upon the air when there arose another 
in the House of Representatives, on February 12, 1848 — one who 
had just voted that the war with Mexico was unnecessary and un- 
constitutional/ and who now based his views of the rights attaching 
by the conquest on the rights of revolution. He said : 

"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, 
have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and 
form a new one that suits them better. 

" This is a most valuable and most sacred right — a right which 
we hope and believe is to liberate the world. 

"Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of 
an existing government may choose to exercise it. 

" Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize, putting 
down a minority intermingled with or near about them who oppose 
their movements. 

" Such a minority was precisely the case of the Tories of the 
Revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines or 
old laws, but to break up both and make new ones." 

Who, think you, my countrymen, were these spokesmen ? 

The one who thus glorified the Union was the Kentucky boy wlio 
had moved to Mississippi, and was about to lead her soldiers under 
the Stars and Stripes in battle, and who now fills the grave of a dis- 
franchised citizen. The other who thus held up revolution as the 
right which was "to liberate the world" was Abraham Lincoln, the 
Kentucky boy who moved to Illinois, and who is now hailed as 
" the defender and preserver of the nation." 

Both Davis and Lincoln Revolutionists. 

Success has elevated the one to a high niche in Fame's proud 
temple. But can failure deny to the other entrance there when we 
remember that the Temple of Virtue is the gateway of the Temple 
of Fame? Both of them in their speeches then stood for American 
principles; both of them in their lives afterwards were the foremost 
champions of American principles ; both of them were revolu- 
tionists, and as such must be judged; and Jefferson Davis never 
advocated an idea that did not have its foundation in the Declaration 
of Independence; that was not deducible from the Constitution of 
the United States as the fathers who made it interpreted its mean- 
ing; that had not been rung in his ears and stamped upon his heart 
from the hour when his father baptized him in the name of Jefferson 



21 

and lie first saw the light in a Commonwealth that was yet vocal 
with the*States'-Rights Resolutions of 1798. 

A Great Representative of American Principles and of Anglo- 
Saxon Character. 

We cannot see the handion the dial as it moves, but it does move 
nevertheless, and so surely as it keeps pace with the circling sun, so 
surely will the hour come when the misunderstandings of the past 
will be reconciled, and its clamors die away ; and then it will be 
recognized by all that Jefferson Davis was more than the represen- 
tative of a section, more than the intelligent guide of a revolution, 
more than the champion of secession. He will stand revealed as a 
political philosopher, to be numbered amongst the great expounders 
of American principles and the great heroes and champions of the 
Anglo-Saxon race. When the turbid streams of war have cleared 
and flow evenly in their channels it will also be seen that under- 
neath the hostile currents which impelled two great peoples in col- 
lision there was a unity of sentiment which, operating from different 
poles of circumstances and interest, threw into separate masses those 
who by natural instinct would have cohered together. 

It is easier to note the differences that float upon the surface of social 
organizations than to detect the congruities and identities that lie 
beneath them; and critics, in their analyses of character, are more 
prone to exhibit the striking antitheses of contrast than to linger 
upon the neutral colors which are common and undistinguishing. 

grerms of controversy not in differences of race, morals, or 
Creed of Early Settlers. 

Some fancy that they discern the germs of the controversy of 
1861 in differences between the groups of colonists which settled in 
Virginia and in Massachusetts, and which they think impressed upon 
the incipient civilization of the ISTorth and South opposing charac- 
teristics, i The one, they say, brought the notions of the Cavaliers, 
the other of the Puritans, to America, and that an irrepressible con- 
flict existed between them. To so believe is to be deceived by the 
merest surface indications. The Puritans and the Cavaliers of Eng- 
land have long since settled their differences in the Old World, and 
become so assimilated that the traces of old-time quarrel, and, indeed, 
of political identity, have been completely obliterated ; and it would 
be strange indeed if in little England they of the same race and 



25 

language were thus blended, that in America, where social adapta- 
tion is so much easier and more rapid, they should have remained 
separate and hostile. Many Cavaliers went to New England, and 
many Puritans came to Virginia and the South, and their differences 
disappeared as quickly as they now disappear between disciples of 
different parties from different sections when thrown into new sur- 
roundings with common interests. 

North and South Controlled by Predominant Traits of Race. 

To understand the causes of conflict we must consider the unities 
of our race, and note the interventions of local causes which dif- 
ferentiated its northern and southern segme.nts. 

When this is done it will be realized that each section has been 
guided by the predominant traits which it possessed in common, and 
which inhered in the very blood of its people, and that differences 
of physical surrounding, not the differences of moral and intellec- 
tual character, led to their crystallization in masses separated by 
diversities of interest and opinion and their resulting passions. 
These diverse interests and opinions sprung out of the very soil on 
which they made their homes even as the pine rises- to towering 
heights in the granite hills of the North, and the palmetto spreads 
its luxuriant foliage on the Southland. The bear of the polar region 
takes his whiteness from the cold sky, and the bear of the tropics 
turns dark under the blazing heavens. The same breeze upon the 
high seas impels one ship north, another south, one east, and another 
west, according to the angle in which it strikes the sail. Natural 
causes operating under fixed laws changed the civilization of the 
North and South ; but though their people were moved in opposite 
directions, he who searches for impelling forces will find them nearly, 
if not quite, identical. 

The Unities of the Anglo-Saxon Race. 

"What are the unities of our race? They are — first, aversion to 
human bondage; second, race integrity; third, thirst for power and 
broad empire; fourth, love of confederated union; fifth, assertion 
of local liberty, if possible, within the bounds of geographical and 
governmental union ; sixth, but assertion of local liberty and indi- 
vidual right under all circumstances, at all times, and at any cost. 
These traits are so strong as to be the natural laws of the race. 
One or another of them has lost its balance in the conflict between 



26 

interest and instinct, but only to reappear with renewed vigor when 
the suppressing circumstances were removed, and he who follows 
their operation will hold the key to the ascendancy of Anglo-Saxon 
character, and to its wonderful success in grasping imperial domains 
and crowning freedom as their sovereign. 

It will not do to dispute the existence of these natural laws ot 
race because they have been time and again overruled by greed, by 
ambition, or by the overwhelming influence of alien or hostile forces. 
As well dispute the courage of the race because now and then a 
division of its troops have become demoralized and broken in battle. 
Through the force of these laws this race has gone around the globe 
with bugles and sworcfs, and banners and hymn-books, and school- 
books and constitutions, and codes and courts, striking down old- 
time dynasties to ordain free principles; sweeping away barbaric and 
savage races that their own seed might be planted in fruitful 
lands; disdaining miscegenation with inferior races, which corrupts 
the blood and degenerates the physical, mental, and moral nature; 
widening the boundaries of their landed possessions, parcelling them 
out in municipal subdivisions, and then establishing .the maximum ot 
local and individual privilege consistent with the common defense 
and general warfare of their grand aggregations; and then again, 
rising in the supreme sovereignty of unfearing manhood against the 
oppressions of the tax-gatherer and the sword,. recasting their insti- 
tutions, flinging rulers from their high places, wrenching govern- 
ment by the mailed hand into consistency with their happiness 
and safety, and proclaiming above all the faith of Jefferson — that 
"Liberty is the gift of God." 

Jefferson^Davis Entitled to Stand in the Pantheon of the 
World's Great Men. 

I shall maintain that the southern people have been as true to 
these instincts as any portion of their race, and have made for them 
as great sacrifices; that the Southern Confederacy grew out of them, 
and only in a subsidiary degree in antagonism to any one of them ; 
and I shall also maintain that Jefferson Davis is entitled to stand in 
the Pantheon of the world's great men on a pedestal not less high 
than those erected for the images of Hampden, Sidney, Cromwell, 
Burke, and Chatham, of the fatherland, and Washington and Ham- 
ilton, Jefferson and Adams, Madison and Franklin, of the New 
World, who, however varying in circumstances or in personality > 



27 

were liberty-leaders and representatives of great people, great ideas, 
and great deeds. 

Unity of the Southern Colonies against Slavery. 

On what ground will he be challenged? Did not the southern 
folk show originally an aversion to slavery more manifestly even 
than those of the ISTorth? South Carolina protested against it as 
early as 1727 and as late as 1760. Georgia prohibited it by law. 
Virginia sternly set her face against it, and levied a tax of ten dol- 
lars per head on every negro to prevent it. They were all overrid- 
den by the avarice of English merchants and the despotism of 
English ministers. "Do as you would be done by" is not yet the 
maxim of our race, which will push off on its weaker brethren that 
it will not itself accept; and thus slavery was thrust on the South, 
an uninvited — aye, a forbidden — guest. Quickly did the South stop 
the slave trade. Though the Constitution forbade the Congress to 
prohibit it prior to 1808, when that year came every southern State 
had itself prohibited it, Virginia leading the list. When Jefferson 
Davis was born it was gone altogether save in one State (South 
Carolina), where it had been revived under combination between 
large planters of the South and ship-owners and slave-traders of the 
North. 

Pine exhibition, too, was that of unselfish southern patriotism 
when, in 1787, by southern votes and Virginia's generosity, and 
under Jefferson's lead, the great northwestern territory was given 
to the Union and to freedom. 

Unity of American Colonies in Yielding to Slavery. 

But the South yielded to slavery, we are told. Yes; but did not 
all America do likewise ? Do we not know that the Pilgrim fathers 
enslaved both the Indian and African race, swapping young Indians 
for the more docile blacks lest the red slave might escape to his 
native forest ? 

Listen to his appeal to Governor Winthrop : " Mr. Endicott and 
myself salute you on the Lord Jesus. We have heard of a division 
of women and children, and would be glad. of a share — viz., a young 
woman or a girl and a boy, if you think good." 

Do we not hear Winthrop himself recount how the Pequods were 
taken " through the Lord's great mercy, of whom the males were 
sent to Bermuda and the females distributed through the bay towns* 



28 

to be employed^ as domestic servants " ? Did not the prisoners of 
King Philip's war suffer a similar fate? Is it not written that when 
one hundred and fifty Indians came voluntarily into the Plymouth 
garrison they were all sold into captivity beyond the seas ? Did not 
Downing declare to Winthrop, " if upon a just war the Lord should 
deliver them (the Narragan setts), we might easily have men, women, 
and children enough to exchange for Moors, which will be more 
gainful pillage to us than we can conceive, for I do not see how we 
can thrive until we get in a stock of slaves sufficient to do all our 
business"? Were not choice parcels of negro boys and girls con- 
signed to Boston from the Indies, and advertised and sold at auction, 
until after independence was declared? Was not the first slave-ship 
in America fitted out by the Pilgrim Colony? Was not the first 
statute establishing slavery enacted in Massachusetts in 1641, with 
a certain comic comprehensiveness providing that there should 
" never be any bond slavery unless it be of captives taken in just 
war, or of such as willingly sold themselves or were sold to them"? 
Did not the United Colonies of New England ^constitute the first 
American Confederacy that recognized slavery ? and was not the 
first fugutive-slave law originated at their bidding ? All this is 
true. Speak slowly, then, ! man of the North, against the 
southern slave-owners, or the southern Chief, lest you cast down 
the images of your ancestors, and their spirits rise to rebuke you 
for treading harshly on their graves. On days of public festival, 
when you hold them up as patterns of patriotism, take care lest you 
be accused of passing the counterfeit coin of praise. Disturb not 
too rudely the memories of the men who defended slavery ; say 
naught of moral obliquity, lest the venerable images of Winthrop 
and Endicott be torn from the historic pages of the Pilgrim Land, 
and the fathers of Plymouth Rock be cast into utter darkness. 

Unity of America in Slavery when Independence was. 
Declared and the Constitution Ordained. 

When independence was declared at Philadelphia, in 1776, America 
was yet a unit in the possession of slaves, and when the Constitution 
of li 87 was ordained the institution still existed in every one of the 
thirteen States save Massachusetts only. True, its decay had begun 
where it was no longer profitable, but every State united in its recog- 
nition in the Federal compact, and the very fabric of our represen- 
tative government was built upon it, as three-fifths of the slaves 
were counted in the basis of representation in the Congress of the 



29 

United States, and property in it was protected by rigid provisions 
regarding the rendition of fugitive slaves escaping from one State to 
another. 

Thus embodied iu the Constitution ; thus interwoven with the 
very integuments of our political system ; thus sustained by the oath 
to support the Constitution, executed by every public servant and 
by the decisions of the supreme tribunals, slavery was ratified by 
the unanimous voice of the nation, and was consecrated as an 
American institution and as a vested right by the most solemn pledge 
and sanction that man can give. 

Deny to Jefferson Davis entry to the Temple of Fame because he 
defended it? Cast out of it first the fathers of the republic. Brand 
with the mark of condemnation the whole people from whom he 
inherited the obligation, and by whom was imposed upon him the 
oath to support their deed. America must prostrate herself in sack- 
cloth and ashes, repent her history, and revile her creators and her 
being ere she can call recreant the man of 1861 who defended the 
heritage and promise of a nation. 

Lincoln and Slavery — " Charity to Ael." 

There is a statue in "Washington city of him who uttered the 
words, " Charity to all, malice to none," and he is represented in 
the act of breaking the manacles of a slave. 

Suppose there were carved on its pedestal the words: "Do the 
southern people really entertain fears that a Republican administra- 
tion would directly or indirectly interfere with the slaves or with 
them about their slaves?" 

" The South would b'e in no more danger in this respect than it 
was in the days of Washington." 

This was his utterance December 22, 1860, after South Carolina 
had seceded. 

Carve again: 

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the 
institution of slavery in the States where it now exists. I believe I 
have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." 
These are the words of his inaugural address March 4, 1861. 

Carve yet again : 

" Resolved, That this war is not waged upon our part with any pur- 
pose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established 
institutions of these States, but to defend and maintain the suprem. 



30 

acy of the Constitution and to preserve the Union." This resolution 
Congress passed and he signed it after the first battle of Manassas. 

And yet once more : 

" I did not at any time say I was in favor of negro suffrage. I 
declared against it. I am not in favor of negro citizenship." 

This opinion he never changed. 

These things show in the light of events — the emancipation pro- 
clamation, the reconstruction acts, the black suffrage, the anarchy 
that reigned — that the South read truly the signs of the irrepressible 
conflict. 

They show, further, that by the right of revolution alone can Abra- 
ham Lincoln be defended in overthrowing the institution which he 
pledged himself to guard like Washington, and with it the Consti- 
tution which he had sworn " to defend and maintain." And if 
Jefferson Davis appealed to the sword and needs the mantle of char- 
ity to cover him, where would Lincoln stand unless the right of 
revolution stretched that mantle wide, and a great people wrapped 
him in its mighty folds ? 

Decay of Slavery in the North and Growth in the South 
Due to Natural and not Moral Causes. 

As the time wore on the homogeneous order of the American 
people changed. It was not conscience but climate and soil which 
effected this change, or rather the instinct of aversion to bondage 
rose up in the North just in proportion as the temptation of interest 
subsided. 

The inhospitable soil of New England repelled the pursuits of 
agriculture and compelled to those of commerce and the mechanic 
arts. In these the rude labor of the untutored African was unprofit- 
able, and the harsh climate was uncongenial to the children of the 
Dark Continent translated from its burning suns to these frigid 
shores. Slavery there was an exotic; it did not pay, and its roots 
soon decayed, like th« roots of a tropic plant in the arctic zone. 

In the fertile plantations of the sunny South there was employ- 
ment for the unskilled labor of the Africau, and under its genial 
skies he found a fitting home. Hence natural causes ejected him 
from the North and propelled him southward; and as the institution 
of slavery decayed in northern latitudes it thrived and prospered in 
the southern clime. 

The demand for labor in the North was rapidly supplied by new 
accessions of Europeans, and as the population increased their opin- 



31 

ions were moulded by the body of the society which absorbed and 
assimilated them as they came ; while on the other hand the pres- 
ence of masses of black men in the South, and the reliance upon 
them for labor, repelled, in both social and economical aspects, the 
European immigrants who eagerly sought for homes and employ- 
ment in the New World. More than this, northern manufacturers 
wanted high tariffs to secure high prices for their products in south- 
ern markets, and southern farmers wanted low tariffs that they might 
buy cheaply. Ere long it appeared that two opposing civilizations 
lay alongside of each other in the United States ; and while the roof 
of a common government was over both of them, it covered a house- 
hold divided against itself in the very structure of its domestic life, 
in the nature of its avocations, in the economies of its labor, and in 
the very tone of its thought and aspiration. 

Revolution was in the air. An irrepressible conflict had arisen. 

Two Revolutions Rising on Parallel Lines — The Revolution 
of the [North Against the Constitution. 

There, were indeed two revolutions forming in the American 
republic. The one was a northern revolution against a Constitution 
which had become distasteful to its sentiments and unsuitecl to its 
needs. As the population of the East moved westward across the 
continent the southern emigrant to the new Territories wished to 
carry with him his household servants, while the northerner saw in 
the negro a rival in the field of labor which cheapened its fruits, and 
degraded, as he conceived, its social status. 

Thus broke out the strife which raged in the territories of north- 
ern latitudes, and as it widened it assailed slavery in every form, and 
denounced as " a covenant with death and with hell " the Constitution 
which had guaranteed its existence. 

The formula of the northern revolution was made by such men as 
Charles Sumner, who took the ground of the higher law, that the 
Constitution itself was unconstitutional, and that it was not in the 
power of man to create by oath or mandate property in a slave — a 
revolutionary idea striking to the root and to the subversion of the 
fundamental law which "Washington, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, 
Madison, and their compeers had joined in making, and under 
which the United States had fought its battle and attained its won- 
derful growth for three-quarters of a century. 



32 



The Northern Giant — Free White Labor. 

" The Impending Crisis," Helper's book, appeared, and, endorsed 
by sixty-eight Abolition members of Congress, went far and wide. 
The spirit of the times is indicated in its doctrines. li Never another 
vote for a slavery advocate ; no co-operation with slavery in politics ; . 
no fellowship in religion ; no affiliation in society ; no patronage to 
pro-slavery merchants ; no guestship in a slave-waiting hotel ; no fee 
to a pro-slavery lawyer ; none to a pro-slavery physician ; no audi- 
ence to a pro-slavery parson ; no subscription to a pro-slavery news- 
paper ; no hiring of a slave ; but the utmost encouragement of Free 
White Labor :" "Free White Labor!" This was the northern 
giant that stalked into the field. 

The Southern Eevolution. 

Meantime the northern revolution against the Constitution was 
being combatted by the rise of the southern revolution looking to 
withdrawal from the union whose Constitution was unacceptable to 
the northern people. 

But it was not hatred to union or love of slavery that inspired the 
South, nor love of the negro that inspired the North. Profounder 
thoughts and interests lay beneath these currents. The rivalry of 
cheap negro labor, aversion to the negro and to slavery alike, were 
the spurs of northern action ; that of the South was race integrity. 
Free White Dominion ! The southern giant rose and faced its foe. 

The South Stands eor Race Integrity. 

The instinct of race integrity is the most glorious, as it is the pre- 
dominant characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the sections 
have it in common. Fiercely did it sweep the red men before it ; 
swiftly did it brush away the Chinese in the West and North, burn- 
ing their homes, cutting their throats when they pressed too hard 
in rivalry, and then breaking treaties to hurl them back across the 
Pacific ocean to their native shores. Four million of black men 
lived in the South side by side with the white race; and race integ- 
rity now incensed the South to action. 

Look further southward beyond the confines of our country and 
behold how the Latin races have commingled their blood with the 
aborigines and negroes, creating mongrel republics and empires, 
where society is debased and where governments, resting on no clear 



principles, swing like pendulums between the extremes of tyranny^ 
and license. 

On the contrary, the American element at the South — and I quote 
a profound northern writer in saying it — "guarded itself with the 
strictest jealousy from any such baleful contaminations." But what 
a picture of horror rose before its eyes as it contemplated the freeing 
of the* slaves. John C. Calhoun had drawn that picture in vivid 
eolors which now, recalling the days of carpet-bag and negro ascen- 
dancy, seems like a prohet's vision. "If I owned the four million 
of slaves in the South," said Robert Lee, "I would sacrifice all for 
the Union." And so, indeed, would the southern people. But Lee 
never indicated how such sacrifice could obtain its object, nor was it 
possible that it could. It was not the property invested in the slave 
that stood in the way, for emancipation with compensation for them 
was then practicable, and was again practicable in early stages of the 
war, and was indeed offered. But free the slaves, they would be- 
come voters ; becoming voters, they would predominate in numbers, 
and so predominating, what would become of white civilization ? 

This was the question which prevented emancipation in Virginia 
in 1832. Kill slavery, what will you do with the corpse ? Only 
silent mystery and awful dread answered that question in 1861, 
while the clamors of abolition grew louder, and the forces were 
accumulating strength to force the issue. In fourteen northern 
States the fugitive- slave law had been nullified. In new territories 
armed mobs denied access to southern masters with their slaves. 
Negro equality became a text of the hustings, and incendiary ap- 
peals to the slaves themselves to murder and burn filled the mails. 

The insurrection of £Tat. Turner had given forecast of scenes as 
horrible as those of the French Revolution, and the bloody butch- 
eries of San Domingo seemed like an appalling warning of the drama 
to be enacted on southern soil. 

The crisis was now hastened by two events. In 1854 the Supreme 
Court, in the Dred-Scott decision, declared the Missouri compro- 
mise of 1820, which limited the extension of slavery to a certain 
line of latitude, unconstitutional. This was welcome to the South, 
but it fired the northern heart. In 1859 John Brown, fresh from 
the border warfare of Kansas, suddenly appeared at Harper's Ferry 
with a band of misguided men, and, murdering innocent citizens, 
invoked the insurrection of the slaves. This solidified and almost 
frenzied the South, and in turn the fate he suffered threw oil upon 
the northern flames. Thus fell out of the gathering clouds the first 
3 



34 

big drops of the bloody storm. In 1860 Abraham Lincoln was 
' elected President, and in his inaugural address he proclaimed his 
party's creed that the Dred-Scott decision might be reversed. The 
southern States were already in procession of secession. The high 
tides of revolution were in their flow. 

The South and the Union — Its Battles. 

Pause, now, upon the threshold, and geography and history will 
alike tell you that neither in its people nor its leader was there lack 
of love for the Union, and that it was with sad hearts that they saw 
its ligaments torn asunder. Look at the southern map. There may 
be read the name of Alamance, where in 1771 the first drop of 
American blood was shed against arbitrary taxation, and at Meck- 
lenburg, where was sounded the first note of Independence. Before 
the Declaration at Philadelphia there had risen in the southern sky 
what Bancroft termed "the bright morning star of American Inde- 
pendence," where, on the 28th of June, 1776, the guns of Moultrie 
at the Palmetto fort in front of Charleston announced the first vic- 
tory of American arms. At King's Mountain is the spot where the 
rough-and-ready men of the Carolinas and the swift riders of Vir- 
ginia and Tennessee had turned the tide of victory in our favor, and 
there at Yorktown is the true birth spot of the free nation. Right 
here I stand to-night on the soil of that State which first of all 
America stood alone free and independent? Beyond the confines 
of the South her sons had rendered yeoman service ; and would not 
the step of the British conqueror have been scarce less than omnipo- 
tent had not Morgan's riflemen from the Valley of Virginia and the 
peerless commander of Mt. Vernon appeared on the plains of Bos- 
ton? You may follow the tracks of the Continentals at Long Island, 
Trenton, Princeton, Brandywine, Germantown, Valley Forge, Mon- 
mouth, and Morristown by the blood and the graves of the south- 
ern men who died on northern soil, far away from their homes, an- 
swering the question with their lives : Did the South love the Union ? 

The Love of the South for American Institutions. 

* Did not the South love American institutions? "What school-boy 
cannot tell? Who wrote the great Declaration? "Who threw down 
the gage, "Liberty or Death?" Who was chief framer of the Con- 
stitution? Who became its great expounder? Who wrote the 
Bill of Rights which is copied far and wide by free commonwealths ? 



35 

"Who presided over the convention that made the Constitution and 
became in field and council its all in all defender? Jefferson, 
Henry, Madison, Marshall, Mason, Washington, speak from your 
graves and give the answer. 

The South Leads in Acquiring the National Domain. 

Did not the South do its part in acquiring the imperial domain of 
the nation ? When the revolution ended the thirteen States that 
lay on the Atlantic seaboard rested westward in a wilderness, and 
the Mississippi marked the extreme limits of their claims as the 
Appalachian range marked the bounds of civilization. The north- 
western territory north of the Ohio river, which now embraces 
Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin, was conquered by 
George Rogers Clarke, a soldier of Virginia, under commissions 
from Patrick Henry as Governor. But for this conquest the Ohio 
would have been our northern boundary, and by Virginia's gift and 
southern votes this mighty land was made the dowry of the Union- 
Kentucky, the first-born State that sprung from the Union, 
was a southern gift to the new confederation. The great territory 
stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the Rocky Mountains' gate 
and to far-off Oregon was acquired by Jefferson, as President, from 
Napoleon, then First Consul of France, and the greatest area ever 
won by diplomacy in history added to the Union. John C. Cal- 
houn, of South Carolina, offered the bill in 1812 which proclaimed 
the second war of independence. President Madison, of Virginia, 
led the country through it, and at New Orleans Andrew Jackson, 
of Tennessee, achieved its culminating victory. 

It is a northern scholar (Theodore Roosevelt) who says: 
" Throughout all the Northwest, where Ohio was the State most 
threatened, the troops of Kentucky formed the bulk of the Ameri- 
can army, and it was a charge of their mounted riflemen which at 
a blow won the battle of the Thames. 

"Again, on the famous January morning, when it seemed as if 
the fair Creole city was already in Packenham's 'grasp, it was the 
wild soldiery of Tennessee who, laying behind their mud breast- 
works, peered out through the lifting fog at the scarlet array of the 
English veterans as the latter, fresh from their victories over the 
best troops of Europe, advanced for the first time to meet defeat." 
In 1836 Samuel Houston sprung from the soil of that very county 
which now holds the ashes of Lee and Jackson, won the battle of 



36 

San Jacinto, and achieved Texan independence. In 1845, under 
James K. Polk, of Tennessee, a southern President, it was admitted 
into the Union, and a little later the American armies, led by two 
southern generals, Zachary Taylor and Winfield Scott, and com- 
posed more than half of southern soldiers, made good the cause of 
the Lone Star State, enlarged its boundaries, and acquired New 
Mexico and California. Thus was stretched the canopy of the wide 
heavens that now spread over the American republic; and, counting 
the constellation of forty-two stars that glitter in it, forget not ye 
who have sentiment of justice that over thirty of them were sown 
there by measures and by deeds in which southern States and south- 
ern soldiers took a leading part, and in which the patriotism and 
love of Union of the South never faltered. 

Secession. 

If the people with such a history could have adopted secession, 
mighty indeed must have been the propulsion to it. I shall not dis- 
cuss its policy, for it would be as vain a thing to do as to discuss that 
of the Revolution of 1776. Each revolution concluded the question 
that induced it. Slavery was the cause of our civil war, and with 
the war its cause perished. But it should be the desire of all to 
understand each other and to think well of each other, and the mind 
capable of just and intelligent reflection should not fail, in judging 
the past, to remember the conditions and views that controlled the 
southern people and their leader. 

Remember that their forefathers, with scarce less attachment to 
the British Government, and with less conflict of interest, had set 
the precedent, seceding themselves from the British empire, tearing 
down ancient institutions, revolutionizing the very structure of 
society, and giving proud answers to all accusers in the new evangel 
of the west that the people have a right to alter or abolish govern- 
ment whenever it becomes destructive to their happiness or safety. 

I have found nowhere evidence that Jefferson Davis urged seces- 
sion, though he believed in the right, approved the act of Mississippi 
after it had been taken, felt himself bound by his State allegiance 
whether he approved or no, and then, like all his southern country- 
men, did his best to make it good. Remember that the Federal Con- 
stitution was silent as to secession ; that the question was one of 
inference only, and that implications radiated from its various pro- 
visions in all directions. 



37 

It one argued that the very institute of government implied per- 
petuity, as Lincoln did in his first inaugural address, another answered 
that reservations to the States of powers not delegated rebutted the 
implication ; another that the government and the constitution had 
come into being in that free atmosphere which breathed the declara- 
tion that they must rest upon the consent of the government ; and 
yet another answered, in Lincoln's own language, that any people 
anywhere had the right to shake off government, and that this was • 
the right that "would liberate the world." 

Eight of Secession not Denied until Recently. 

Remember that this right of secession had never been denied until 
recent years ; that it had been preached upon the hustings, enunciated 
in political platforms, proclaimed in the Senate and in the House of 
Representatives, embodied in our literature, taught in our schools and 
colleges, interwoven with the texts of jurisprudence, and maintained 
by scholars, statesmen, and constituencies of all States and sections 
of the country. 

Secession an Open Question in 1861. 

Remember, furthermore, that secession was an open question in 
1861. No statute had ever declared, no executive had ever pro- 
claimed, no court had held, it to be unconstitutional. The States 
had declared themselves to be free and independent. American sov- 
ereignty was hydra-headed, and each State had its own statute, 
defining and punishing treason against itself. No man could have 
an independent citizenship of the United States, but could only 
acquire citizenship of the federation by virtue of citizenship of one 
of the States. The eminent domain of the soil remained in the 
State, and to it escheated the 'property of the intestate and heirless 
dead. "Was not this the sovereign that " had the right to command 
in the last resort " ? 

Tucker had so taught in his commentaries on Blackstone, writing 
from old "Williamsburg ; so Francis Rawle, the eminent lawyer whom 
Washington had asked to be Attorney-General, writing on the Con- 
stitution, in Philadelphia; and so DeTocqueville, the most acute and 
profound foreign writer on American institutions. 

No Arbiter to Decide the Question op Secession. 

Where could an arbiter be found? There was no method of in- 
voking the Supreme Court; it had no jurisdiction to coerce a State 



38 

or summon it to its bar. Nor could its decree be final. For it is a 
maxim of our jurisprudence uttered by Jefferson, and reiterated by 
Lincoln in his first inaugural address, that its decisions may be 
reconsidered and reversed and bind only the clients. 

Secession Preached and Threatened in all Sections — The 
Northern Record for It and Against Extension op the 
Union. 

Recall the history of the doctrine ; forget not that the first mut- 
terings of secession had come from the North as early as 1793, in 
opposition to the threatened war with England, when the sentiments 
uttered by Theodore Dwight in his letter to Wolcott were wide- 
spread. " Sooner would ninety-nine out of a hundred of our inhabi- 
tants separate from the Union than plunge themselves into an abyss 
of misery." 

Nullification broke out in the South in 1798, led by Jefferson, and 
again in 1830, led by Calhoun; but in turn secession or nullification 
was preached in and out of Congress, in State Legislatures, in mass- 
meetings and conventions in 1803, 1812, and in 1844 to 1850, and in 
each case in opposition made by the North to wars or measures con- 
ducted to win the empire and solidify the structure of the Union. 

While Jefferson was annexing Louisiana, Massachusetts legisla- 
tors were declaring against it as " forming a new confederacy, to 
which the States united by the former compact were not bound to 
adhere." 

While new States were 'being admitted into the Union out of its 
territory, and the war of 1812 was being conducted, Josiah Quincy 
was maintaining the right of secession in Congress; the eastern 
States were threatening to exercise that right, and the Hartford con- 
vention was promulgating the doctrine. 

When Texas was annexed, and Jefferson Davis was in Congress 
advocating it, Massachusetts was declaring it unconstitutional, and 
that any such " act or admission would have no binding obligation 
on its people." 

While the Mexican war was being fought and the soldier-states- 
man, of Mississippi was carrying the Stars and Stripes in glory over 
the heights of Monterey, and bleeding under them in the battle 
shock of Buena Yista, Abraham Lincoln was denouncing the war as 
unconstitutional, and northern multitudes were yet applauding the 
eloquence of the Ohio orator who had said in Congress that the 



39 

Mexicans should welcome our soldiers " with bloody hands to hospi- 
table graves." 

Candid View from the North. 

Consider these grave words, which are but freshly written in the 
life of Webster by Henry Cabot Lodge, who is at this time a Re- 
publican representative in Congress from the city of Boston, Mass. : 

When the Constitution was adopted by the votes of States at Phila- 
delphia and accepted by votes of States in popular conventions it 
was safe to say there was not a man in the country, from Washing- 
ton and Hamilton, on the one side, to George Clinton and George 
Mason, on the other, who regarded the new system as anything but 
an experiment entered upon by the States, and from which each and 
every State had the right to peaceably toithdraw — a right which was very 
likely to be exercised. 

Contemporary Northern Opinions oe Secession. 

Recall the contemporary opinions of northern publicists and lead- 
ing journals. The New York Herald considered coercion out of 
the question. On the 9th of November, 1860, the New York Tri- 
bune, Horace Greeley being the editor, said : 

"If the cotton States shall decide that they can do better out of 
the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace. The 
right to secede may be a revolutionary one, but it exists neverthe- 
less, and we do not see how one party can have the right to do what 
another party has a right to prevent. We must ever resist the 
asserted right of any State to remain in the Union and nullify or 
defy the laws thereof; to withdraw from the Union is quite another 
matter." 

This was precisely the creed of Jefferson Davis. 

Again, on the 17th day of December, after the secession of South 
Carolina, that journal said: 

"If the Declaration of Independence justified the secession from 
the British empire of three millions of colonists in 1776, we do not 
see why it would not justify the secession of five millions of south- 
erners from the Federal Union in 1861. If we are mistaken on the 
point, why does not some one attempt to show wherein and why?" 

And yet again, on the 23d of February, after Mr. Davis had been 
inaugurated as President at Montgomery, it said : 

" We have repeatedly said, and we once more insist, that the 
great principle embodied by Jefferson in the Declaration of Amcri- 



40 

can Independence, that governments derive their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, is sound and just, and that if the slave 
States, the cotton States, or the Gulf States only choose to form an 
independent nation they have a clear moral right to do so." 

The Balance op Power the Political Question Underlying 

Secession. 

The controlling truth was that two incompatible and hostile civil- 
izations were in ceaseless conflict, and the balance of power between 
them, like the balance of power in Europe, dominated the politics 
of the country. There was equilibrium between these rival powers 
and sections when their race began, and each in turn threatened 
secession as the equilibrium trembled to the one side or the other. 

This was the cause of northern hostility to the Louisiana, the 
Texas, and Mexican annexations, and this the cause of southern 
contention for territorial rights in Kansas and Nebraska. 

Having given the North generous advantages in the northwestern 
territory in 1787, and foreseeing the doom of her institutions and 
the upheaval of her society, with the balance of power lost to her, 
and unable to maintain herself in the Union on an issue which 
involved not only two thousand millions of property, but far more 
than that — the peace of society, the integrity, purity, and liberty of 
the white race — the South adopted in 1861 the measure which the 
northern States had often threatened, but never attempted, against 
the Union — the measure which all Americans had not only attempted, 
but had consecrated as just in principle and vindicated by deed in 
1776. 

The United States Treated Secession as a Political Question 
and Met it by Revolution. 

The historian will note that while the United States declared war 
on the ground that secession was treason, they practically treated it 
as a political question of territorial integrity. They accorded bel- 
ligerent rights to the Confederacy, exchanged prisoners, and gave 
paroles of war, and revolutionized all theories and constitutional 
mandates to carry their main point — the preservation of the Union. 
General Grant says of their legislation in his Memoirs: "Much of it 
was no doubt unconstitutional, but it was hoped that the laws enacted 
would subserve their purpose before their constitutionality could be 
submitted to the judiciary and a decision obtained." Of the war he 



41 

says: "The Constitution was not framed with a view to any such 
rebellion as that of 1861-'65. While it did not authorize rebellion, 
it made no provision 'against it. Yet," he adds, " the right to resist 
or suppress rebellion is as inherent as the right of an individual to 
preserve his life when it is in jeopardy. The Constitution was, 
therefore, in abeyance for the time being, so far as it in any way 
affected the progress and termination of the war." 

This is revolution. 

Indicted for treason, Jefferson Davis faced his accusers with the 
uplifted brow and dauntless heart of innocence, and eagerly asked 
a trial. If magnanimity had let him pass it would have been appre- 
ciated; but they who punished him without a hearing, before they 
set him free, now proceeded to amend the Constitution to disfran- 
chise him and his associates, finding, like Grant, nothing in it as it 
stood against such movement as he led. 

It may be that but for the assassination of President Lincoln — 
most infamous and unhappy deed — which 

"Uproared the universal peace 
And poured the milk of Concord into hell," 

the country would have been spared the shame of President Davis' 
cruel incarceration and the maiming of the Constitution. 

For I can scarcely believe that he who three times overruled 
emancipation; who appealed to "indispensable necessity" as justifi- 
cation for "laying strong hands on the colored element" ; who can- 
didly avowed northern "complicity" in the wrongs of his time; 
who said, " I claim not to have controlled events, but confess plainly 
that events have controlled me " ; who had preached revolution in 
1848, and revolutionized all things to save the Union in 1862 — I 
can scarcely believe it possible 'that one of his broad mind and gen- 
erous heart would have persecuted an honorable foe. It has been a 
wonder to me that those who justly applaud his virtues have not 
copied his example; wonder, indeed, that all men have not seen 
that the events which controlled him controlled also his antagonist. 

The Country Unified by Natural Laws. . 

The United States have been unified by natural laws, kindred to 
those which unified the South in secession, but greater because 
wider spread. Its physical constitution, in 1861, answered to the 
northern mind the written Constitution and the traditions of our 
origin to which the South appealed. The Mississippi river, the nat- 



42 

ural outlet of a new-born empire to the sea, was a greater inter- 
preter to it than the opinions of statesmen who lived when the great 
new commonwealths were yet in the wilderness, and before the 
great republic spanned the father of waters. 

The river seeking its bed as it rolls oceanward pauses not to con- 
sider whose are the boundaries of the estates through which it flows. 
If a mountain barrier stands in the way it forms a lake until the 
accumulated waters break through the impeding wall or dash over 
it in impetuous torrents. So nations in their great movements seem 
to be swept out of the grooves defined by the laws of man, and are 
oftentimes propelled to destinies greater than those conjured in their 
dreams. 

The Constitution - of Nature and the Jury op the Sword. 

The rivalry, not the harmony, of sections won the empire of the 
Union ; its physical constitution proved more powerful than its 
written one ; in the absence of a judge all appealed to the jury of the 
sword. We belong to a high-handed race and understand the law 
of the sword, for the men of Independence in 1776 and 1861 were 
of the same blood as those who in each case cried, " Disperse, ye 
rebels." And were I of the North I would prefer to avow that it 
made conquest by the high hand than coin the great strife that mar- 
shalled over three millions of soldiers into police-court technicalities 
and belittles a revolution continent wide into the quelling of an in- 
surrection and the vicarious punishment of its leader. The greatest 
conqueror proclaims his naked deed. 

The South in the Union at Home. 

As we are not of the North, but of the South, and are now, like 
all Americans, both of and for the Union, bound up in its destinies, 
contributing to its support, and seeking its welfare, I feel that as he 
was the hero in war who fought the bravest, so he is the hero now 
who puts the past in its truest light, does justice to all, and knows 
no foe but him who revives the hates of a bygone generation. 

If we lost by war a southern union of thirteen States, we have yet 
a common part in a continental union of forty-two, to which our 
fathers gave their blood, and upon which they shed their blessings; 
and a people who could survive four years of such experience as we 
had in 1861-'65 can work out their own salvation on any spot of 
earth that God intended for man's habitation. "We are, in fact, in 



43 

our father's home, and it should he, as it is, our highest aim to de 
velop its magnificent possibilities, and make it the happiest dwell- 
ing-place of the children of men. 

Jefferson Davis a Lover of the Union - . 

The southern leader was no Secessionist per se. His antecedents, 
his history, his services, his own earnest words often uttered, attest 
his love of the Union and his hope that it might endure. In 1853, 
in a letter to Hon. "William J. Brown, of Indiana, he repudiated the 
imputation that he was a disunionist. 

" Pardon," he said, " pardon the egotism, in consideration of the 
occasion, when I say to you that my father and uncles fought in the 
Revolution of 1776, giving their youth, their blood, and their little 
patrimony to the constitutional freedom which I claim as my inherit- 
ance. Three of my brothers fought in the war of 1812 ; two of them 
were comrades of the Hero of the Hermitage, and received his com- 
mendation for gallantry at ISTew Orleans. At sixteen years of age 
I was given to the service of my country. For twelve years of my 
life I have borne its arms and served it zealously, if not well. As I 
feel the infirmities which suffering more than age has brought 
upon me, it would be a bitter reflection indeed if I was forced to 
conclude that my countrymen would hold all this light when 
weighed against the empty panegyric which a time-serving politi- 
cian can bestow upon the Union, for which he never made a sacri- 
fice. 

" In the Senate I announced if any respectable man would call 
me a disunionist I would answer him in monosyllables. But I have 
often asserted the right for which the battles of the Revolution were 
fought, the right of a people to change their government whenever 
it was found to be oppressive and subversive of the objects for which 
governments are instituted, and have contended for the independ- 
ence and sovereignty of the States; a part of the creed of which 
Jefferson was the apostle, Madison the expounder, and Jackson the 
consistent defender." 

Repudiation of Disunionism and Efforts to Save the Union. 

Four years later,. when Senator Fessenden, of Maine, said, turn- 
ing to him : " I have avowed no disunion sentiments on this floor; 
can the honorable gentleman from Mississippi say as much ? " Mr. 
Davis answered: "Yes; I have long sought for a respectable man to 



44 

allege the contrary." And the imputation ended with the unan- 
swered challenge to produce the evidence. Even when secession 
seemed a foregone conclusion, Mr. Davis strove to avert it, being 
ready at any time to adopt the Crittenden measures of compromise 
if they were accepted by the opposition; and when the representa- 
tives and senators from Mississippi were called in conference with 
the Governor of that State, in December, 1860, he still advised -for- 
bearance " as long as any hope of a peaceful remedy remained," 
declaring that he felt certain, from his knowledge of the people ISTorth 
and South, that "if once there was a clash of arms the contest would 
be one of the most sanguinary the world had ever witnessed." But 
a single member of the conference agreed with him; several of its 
members were so dissatisfied with his position that they believed 
him entirely opposed to secession and as seeking delay with the 
hope that it might be averted; and the majority overruling his 
counsels, he then announced that he would stand by any action 
which might be taken by the convention representing the sover- 
eignty of the State of Mississippi. Thus he stood on the brink of 
war, conservative, collected, appreciating the solemn magnitude of 
the crisis, and although the pencil of hostile passion has otherwise 
portrayed him, I do not believe there was a man living in 1861 who 
could have uttered more sincerely than he the words of Addison : " Is 
there not some chosen curse, some hidden thunder in the stars of 
Heaven, red with uncommon wrath, to blast the man who owes his 
greatness to his country's ruin?" 

Pleading for Conciliation. 

Pleading still for conciliation, on January 10/1861, it was the 
heart of a patriot and not that of the ambitious aspirant from which 
flowed these words : 

" What, senators, to-day is the condition of the country ? From 
every corner of it comes the wailing cry of patriotism pleading for 
the preservation of the great inheritance we derived from our 
fathers. Is there a senator who does not daily receive letters appeal- 
ing to him to use even the small power which one man here 
possesses to save the rich inheritance our fathers gave us ? Tears 
are trickling down the faces of men who have bled for the flag of 
their country and are willing now to die for it; but patriotism stands 
p werless before the plea that the party about to come to power 
adopted a platform, and that come what will, though ruin stare us 



45 

in the face, consistency must be adhered to, even though the govern- 
ment be lost." 

Even as he spoke, though perhaps as yet unknown to him, Missis- 
sippi the day before had passed the ordinance of secession. 

Farewell to the Senate. 

On the 20th of January he rose in the Senate to announce that 
fact, and that "of course his functions there were terminated." 

In language characterized by dignity and moderation, in terms as 
decorous and in sentiments as noble as became a solemn crisis and a 
high presence, he bade farewell to the Senate. 

"In the course of my service here," he said, "associated at dif- 
ferent times with a great variety of senators, I see now around me 
some with whom I have served long. There may have been points 
of collision, but whatever of offense there has been to me I leave here. 
I carry with me no hostile remembrance. "Whatever offense I have 
given which has not been redressed, or for which satisfaction has not 
been demanded, I have, senators, in this hour of our parting, to offer 
you my apology for any pain which in the heat of discussion I have 
inflicted. I go hence unincumbered of the remembrance of any in- 
jury received, and I have discharged the duty of making the only 
reparation in my power for any injury offered." 

In clear statement he summarized his political principles. 

" It is known to you, senators, who have served with me here, that 
I have for many years advocated, as an essential attribute of State 
sovereignty, the right of a State to secede from the Union"; but 
he hoped none would "confound the expression with the advocacy 
of the right of a State to remain in the Union, and to disregard the 
constitutional, obligation by the nullification of the law. Such is 
not my theory. Secession belongs to a different class of remedies. 
It is to be justified upon the basis of State sovereignty. There was 
a time when none denied it." 

He pointed out that the position he then assumed was the same 
that he had occupied when Massachusetts had been arraigned at the 
bar of the Senate, and when the doctrine of coercion was ripe, and 
to be applied against her because of the rescue of a fugitive slave in 
Boston. " My opinion then was the same as it is now. I then said 
that if Massachusetts chose to take the last step which separates her 
from the Union, it is her right to go, and I will neither vote one 
dollar nor noe man to force her back, but will say to her God-speed, 



46 

in memory of the kind associations which once existed between her 
and the other States." 

In concluding, he said: "I find in myself, perhaps, a type of the 
general feeling of my constituents towards yours. I am sure I feel 
no hostility toward you senators from the North. I am sure there 
is not one of you, whatever sharp discussions there may have been 
between us, to whom I cannot now say, in the presence of my God, 
I wish you well, and such I am sure is the feeling of the people 
whom I represent towards those whom you represent. 

" I therefore feel that I but express their desire when I say I hope, 
and they hope, for peaceable relations with you, though we must part. 

" They may be mutually beneficial to us in the future, as they 
have been in the past, if you so will it. 

" The reverse may bring disaster on every portion of our country; 
and if you will have it thus, we will invoke the God of our fathers 
who delivered them from the power of the Lion to protect us from 
the ravages of the Bear, and thus putting our trust in God, and in 
our firm hearts and strong arms we will vindicate the right as best 
we may." 

Secession and Virginia. - 

Well was that pledge redeemed. South Carolina, Florida, Mis- 
sissippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, and North 
Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee, all seceded, while Kentucky, 
Missouri, and Maryland were divided in sentiment. Jefferson Davis 
became by unanimous selection President of the Confederate States 
of America ; the capital, first planted at Montgomery, was removed 
here to Richmond, and for four years the new republic waged for 
its life the mightiest warfare of modern times. " There was some- 
thing melancholy and grand," says a northern historian, "in the 
motives that caused Virginia at last to make common cause " with 
the South. Having made it, she has borne her part with a sub- 
limity of heroism such as was never surpassed, and has uttered no 
cry in the majesty of her sorrows. 

'No State has done more for peace than Virginia, as none had 
done more originally for union ; no State more reluctantly or more 
unselfishly drew the sword; no State wielded a brighter or sterner 
blade after it was drawn ; no State suffered so much by it ; no State 
used triumph with more generosity or faced defeat with greater 
dignity ; no State has abided the fate of war with greater mag- 
nanimity or greater wisdom ; and no State turns her face with fairer 



47 

hope or steadier courage to the future. It seemed the very sarcasm 
of destiny that the Mother of States should have been the only one 
of all the American commonwealths that was cut in twain by the 
sword. But it is the greatness of spirit, not the size of the body, 
that makes the character and glory of the State, as of the man ; 
and old Virginia was never worthier the love of her sons and the 
respect of all mankind than to-day as she uncovers her head by the 
bier of the dead chieftain whose fortunes she followed in storm and 
trial, and to whose good fame she will be true, come weal, come woe. 

The Odds Against the Confederacy Explain its Fall. 

I shall make no post-mortem examination of the Confederacy in 
search of causes for its fall. When an officer during the war was 
figuring on prospects of success, General Lee said to him : " Put up 
your pencil, Colonel ; if we follow the calculations of figures, we 
are whipped already." 

Twenty millions of people on the one side, nine millions (and half 
of them slaves) on the other ; a great navy, arsenals, armies, facto- 
ries, railroads, boundless wealth and science, and an open world to 
draw upon for resources and reinforcements upon the one side, and 
little more than a thin line of poorly-armed and half-fed soldiery upon 
the other, pitted one man against two — a glance of the eye tells the 
story of the unequal contest. As my noble commander (General 
Early) said : " I will not speculate on the causes of failure, as I 
have seen abundant causes for it in the tremendous odds brought 
against us." 

That President Davis made mistakes I do not doubt ; but the per- 
centage of mistakes was so small in the sum of his administration, 
and its achievements so transcended all proportions of means and 
opportunities, that mankind will never cease to wonder at their mag- 
nitude and their splendor. 

Finances went wrong, some say. Finances always go wrong in 
failures; but not worse in this case than in the revolution of 1776, 
when Washington was at the head. So far did they go wrong then 
that not even success could rescue the worthless paper money of our 
fathers from repudiation and oblivion, and even to this day the very 
worst fling that can be made at the Confederate note reaches a climax 
in the expression, " It is not worth a continental." 



48 



Jefferson Davis Created and Maintained a Nation. 

Blame Jefferson Davis for this or that; discount all that critics 
say, and then behold the mighty feat which created and for four years 
maintained a nation ; behold how armies without a nucleus were 
marshalled and armed — how a navy, small indeed, but one that 
revolutionized the naval warfare of all nations and became the ter- 
ror of the seas, was fashioned out of old hulks or picked up in for- 
eign places ; see how a world in arms was held at bay by a people 
and a soldiery whom he held together with an iron will and hurled 
like a flaming thunderbolt at their foes. 

The Cabinet of Jefferson Davis. 

In his Cabinet he gathered the foremost civilians of the land — 
Toombs, Hunter, Benjamin, Bragg, Watts, Davis, Memminger, 
Trenholm, Walker, Randolph, Seddon, Breckenridge, Mai lory, 
Reagan. Good men and true were these, regardful of every duty. 

His Generals and His Armies. 

To the leadership of his soldiers whom did he delegate ? If some 
Messioner could throw upon the canvas Jefferson Davis in the midst 
of those chiefs whom he created, what grander knighthood could 
history assemble ? 

Robert E. Lee, Albert Sidney Johnston, Joseph E. Johnston, G. 
T. Beauregard, Samuel Cooper, and Braxton Bragg were generals 
of the full rank. 

Stonewall Jackson, Forrest, Polk, Hardee, Ewell, D. H. Hill, A. 
P. Hill, Hood, Richard Taylor, Holmes, R. H. Anderson, Pember- 
ton, Early, Kirby Smith, Longstreet, Hampton, S. D. Lee, A. P. 
Stewart, Buckner, Wheeler, and Gordon were their lieutenants. 

Major-generals, brigadiers and field officers, cavalry leaders, artil- 
lerists, and infantry commanders who became world renowned, 
throng upon the memory. The names of Stuart, Ashby, Morgan, 
Cleburne, and their compeers spring from the full heart to the lip. 
Would that time permitted me to call that brilliant roll of the living 
and the dead; but why need the voice pronounce what all would 
speak? 

Men judge Napoleon by his marshals ; judge Jefferson Davis and 
his chosen chieftains, and the plea of words seems weak indeed by 
the side of Men and Deeds. 



49 

Troop behind them those armies of " tattered uniforms and bright 
musket " — but no, it is beyond the reach of either brush or chisel to 
redeem to the imagination such men, such scenes, as shine in their 
twenty-two hundred combats and battles. JSTot until some new-born 
Homer shall touch the harp can mankind be penetrated by a sense 
of their heroic deeds, and then alone in the grand majestic min- 
strelsy of epic song. 

War. 

And now that war is flagrant, far and wide on land and sea and 
river, over the mountain and the plain, rolls the red battle tide and 
rises the lofty cheer. The son falls, the old father steps in his place. 
The father falls, the stripling of the play-ground rushes to the front; 
the boy becomes a man. Lead fails — old battle-fields are raked over, 
children gather up bullets as they would pluck berries, household 
ornaments and utensils are broken, and all are moulded into missiles 
of war. Cannon fail — the very church bells whose mellow chimes 
have summoned to the altar are melted and now resound with the 
grim detonations of artillery. Clothes fail — old garments are turned 
over; rags and exercise are raiment. The battle-horse is killed, the 
ship goes down; the unhorsed trooper and the unshipped tar trudge 
along with the infantry. The border States are swept away from the 
Confederacy; the remaining ones gird their loins the tighter. Vir- 
ginia is divided ; there is enough of her left for her heroic heart to 
beat in. New Orleans is gone; Yieksburg falls; Gettysburg is lost; 
armies wither; exiles make their homes in battle; slender battalions 
do the duty of divisions. Generals die in the thick fight; captains 
become generals; a private is a company. Luxuries disappear; ne- 
cessities become luxuries. Fields are wasted ; crops and barns are 
burned ; flocks and herds are consumed, and naught is left but "man 
and steel — the soldier and his sword." 

The desolate winter lays white and bleak upon the land ; its chill 
winds are resisted by warm and true affections. 

Atlanta, Mobile, Charleston, Savannah fall — the Confederacy is 
cut to pieces. Its fragments become countries with frontiers on 
skirmish lines and capitals on horseback. 

Ports are sealed — the world and the South are parted. All the 
dearer seems the scant sky that hangs over her bleeding children. 

On and on and on come the thickening masses of the North — 
brave men, bravely led, and ably commanded; and as those of the 
South grow thinner, theirs grow stronger. Hope sinks; despair 
stiffens courage. 



50 

Everything fails but manhood and womanhood. The woman 
cooks and weaves and works, nurses the stricken and buries her 
dead and cheers her living. The man stands to his gun behind 
Johnston, behind Lee. Petersburg and Richmond starve and bleed, 
and yet stand dauntless. And here amongst you — while the thun- 
ders shake the capitol and the window-panes of his home, and the 
earth trembles — here stands Jefferson Davis, unshaken, untrem- 
bling, toiling to give bread to his armies and their kindred, toiling 
to hold up the failing arms of his veterans, unbelieving that Heaven 
could decree the fall of such a people. 

At last the very fountains of nature fail. The exhausted South 
falls prone upon its shield. 

Let Him Rest in Richmond. 

\ 

It is gone ! All gone ! • Forever gone ! The Confederacy and its 
sons in gray have vanished; and now at last, hoary with years, the 
Chieftain rests, his body mingling with the ashes of the brave which 
once quickened with a country's holy passion. 

Hither let that body be borne by the old soldiers of the Con- 
federacy. Here in Richmond, by the James, where was his war 
home, where his child is buried, where his armies were marshalled, 
where the Congress sat, where was the capitol, the arsenal, the cita- 
del, the field of glory, and at last the tomb of the Confederacy — 
here let him be buried, and the land of Washington and Lee and 
Stonewall Jackson will hold in sacred trust his memory and his 
ashes. 

The Future will Honor Him. 

The restless tides of humanity will rush hither and thither over 
the land of battles. The ages will sweep on, and 

' ' Rift the hills, roll the waters, flash the lightnings, weigh the sun. ' ' 

The white sails of commerce will thicken on your river and the 
smoke of increasing factories will blacken the skies. Mountains 
will pour forth their precious metals, and fields will glow in the gar- 
niture of richer harvests. The remnants of lives spared from the 
battle will be interwoven with the texture of the Union; new 
stars will cluster upon the flag, and the sons of the South will bear 
it as their fathers bore it to make the bounds of freedom wider yet. 
Our great race will meet and solve every problem, however dark, 



51 

that it now faces, and a people reconciled and mighty will stretch 
forth their arms to stay those of the oppressor. But no greater 
souls will rise than those who find rest under the southern sod from 
Sumter's battered wall to the trailing vines and ivy leaves of Holly- 
wood, and none will come forth of truer heart or cleaner hands or 
higher crest to lead them. 

To the dust we give his body now ; the ages receive his memory. 
They have never failed to do justice, however tardy, to him who 
stood by his people and made their cause his own. 

The world does not to-day think less of Warren because he fell 
at Bunker Hill, a red-handed colonial rebel, fighting the old flag of 
his sovereign even before his people became secessionists from the 
crown, nor because his yeomen were beaten in the battle. 

The great character and work of John Hampden wear no stigma, 
though he rode out of the battle at Chalgrove stricken to death by 
a loyal bullet and soon filled a rebel's grave. 

Oliver Cromwell is a proud name in English history, though the 
English republic which he founded was almost as short-lived as the 
Confederacy and was soon buried under the re-established throne of 
the Stuarts. 

And we but forecast the judgment of the years to come when we 
pronounce that Jefferson Davis was great and pure as statesman, 
man, and patriot. 

In the eyes of Him to whom a thousand years are as a watch in 
the night, the war and the century in which it came are but as a 
single heart-throb in the breast of time, and when the myriads of 
this great land shall look back through unclouded skies to the old 
heroic days, the smoke and stain of battle will have vanished from 
the hero's name. The tall chieftain of the men who wore the gray 
will stand before them " with a countenance like the lightning and 
in raiment as white as snow." 



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